


Warp and Weft

by lanalucy



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: Episode Tag, Episode: s03e17 Maelstrom, Gen, Resurrection, Spirit Guides
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-08
Updated: 2017-04-08
Packaged: 2018-10-16 04:44:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,812
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10563879
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lanalucy/pseuds/lanalucy
Summary: What happened while Kara was gone? Why was she so different when she came back?





	

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to laura_mayfair and singerdiva01_sk for beta, thoughts, questions, and suggestions.  
> Thanks to NM for final polish and the ending haiku.

Kara gasped, pain spiking through her head. Jumbled memories flashed, faster than she could make sense of them. Periodically, one would stand out, sharp, clear, full-bodied. An old man in uniform on a bridge over a river. A very young man and a very small bed. A man built like a god looking up at her. A man in some kind of suit, rushing through wreckage toward her, smiling wide enough to crack his face. An older red-headed woman, pointing a gun at her. The same woman hugging her. A tall, muscled man kissing her hand. A sharp-faced man smiling at her across a table. A child, yellow curls and shy smile.

As her breathing and heartbeat slowed, so did the rush of memories. The pain in her head faded to a dull roar. 

She looked around. She was in a tub. Lifting her hand, she watched the goo drip off her skin. This seemed important, but she couldn't pinpoint why.

Sounds behind her. She sat up, swishing the goo in the tub.

"Hello, Kara." A woman, blonde, her face a mixture of joy and surprise, perhaps even awe.

_Kara_. That felt...right somehow.

Behind the first woman, a dark-skinned woman in robes, compact, kindness and compassion radiating out of her being. She said nothing.

"Welcome back," the first woman said. "I was hoping I was misinterpreting things, but I had to be prepared."

Kara tried to speak, stopped, cleared her throat. "Prepared?"

"Well, neither of us were supposed to end up here." She waved her hand around the room.

As the woman said, "here," the jumble of memories settled into place. The Old Man. Zak. Lee. Helo. Laura. Sam. Leoben. Kacey.

"Ellen." The word dropped out of Kara's mouth and hit the floor like a brick. 

Ellen inclined her head. "Yes, but not the Ellen you knew."

"Sounds like something you'd say."

Ellen appeared to ignore that, asking instead, "How do you feel?"

Kara took stock of her body and realized nothing hurt. Not her fingers. Not her knee. Not even a twinge in her scars from Caprica. It was as if her body were brand new. But what Ellen didn't know couldn't hurt Kara. "Fine," she said. "What about her?" Kara pointed toward Elosha.

"There's no one else here."

Elosha smiled. "It's all right, child. I'm here for you, not her. There's more than one kind of adjustment."

Ellen picked up a robe, holding it out for Kara. Kara stood, the goo dripping in slimy strings from her tense body, and gripped the hand Ellen offered as she stepped out of the tub. Kara pulled the robe on and drew its softness tight around her.

Ellen turned and walked toward the corridor. "Your flight suit was easy enough. We had plenty. The viper was more difficult, but I picked through all the memories available in the data stream, and I believe we perfected it. You, however, I had no way to be sure until you woke up.

_I'm a cylon?_

Elosha chuckled. "No, child. Well, yes and no. You would never have known, never have needed to know. You've had a hard life, harder than most, and you kept coming back for more. The time with Leoben and losing Kacey were the straws that broke the camel's back. The gods understand."

Ellen stopped in the corridor, gesturing to another room. Kara stepped in. A bed. A real bed. And oh, gods! A shower! She stepped toward it without even thinking. Ellen's voice broke into her daze.

"I thought you'd like to freshen up. There are clothes in the closet, and this tile," she pointed, "closes the door."

"Thank you," Kara said. Ellen walked away, and Kara touched the tile. The door slid closed without a sound, and she dropped the robe and practically sprinted for the shower as Elosha settled on the bed.

Once inside, Kara stared at the solid walls until Elosha said, "I believe the tiles work in there as well."

Kara experimented, touching tiles in a line down from the shower head, and she yelped when hot water sprayed her in the face. She smiled and bent her head and let the water flow over her. Gods, it felt so frakking good. She reached out blindly, touching a tile at random, startled when a shelf slid out. Still enjoying the hot water, she side-eyed the shelf: there were little bottles and a small sponge on it. _Gods. I hope one of those is shampoo._

Elosha's laughter rang in the room. "Child, you ask for such small things!"

Kara smiled without thinking about it. _For now._

"Yes. Of course. But finish your shower and get some sleep. We'll talk more when you're rested."

After scrubbing every inch of her body, twice, Kara finally felt clean, and she touched the tile for the shower. As the shower stopped, the shelf slid away, too. Outside the shower enclosure, she scrutinized the tiles, and though there was no visible difference, she reached out confidently and touched one of them. A larger shelf slid out, holding a fluffy scarlet towel.

Kara took her time drying off, relishing the sensation of the cloth against her skin. By the time she was dry, exhaustion had overcome her, and she stumbled toward the bed. Elosha had pulled down the covers, and Kara fell in. The last things she felt were the covers pulled up over her shoulders and Elosha's cool hand on her forehead.

"Rest now, child. You have much to do."

=-=-=-=-=-=

She dreamed. Colored threads criss-crossed in patterns she couldn't comprehend. She reached out and touched one, and the tangle of threads coalesced as she zoomed in. Her father and her mother connected by a barely visible thread, though the one from her father to her was stronger. Her thread was a soft aqua, brightening when she got into flight school.

When she met Bill Adama on the bridge, his burnt orange thread combined with hers and became a deep, rich brown. The brown lightened a bit when her thread combined with Zak's, and the thread between her and Lee was the green-brown of fertile earth.

It was clear to her she and the Adamas were inextricably linked, that they were meant to be family. It was also clear that by choosing Zak, she'd damaged the threads between Bill and Lee almost to the breaking point. The only thing keeping them together at some points was her thread, woven in and around theirs. She'd almost broken them, but she'd also helped put them back together.

Karl's thread was green, and when combined with hers, shone like a star. It grew. It strengthened. It became an anchor for both of them, something they clung to without thought. The threads frayed a bit when they met again at the museum, but quickly repaired themselves.

Sam's thread was bright, sunny, and more loosely woven with hers. Their colors didn't combine, but the threads stayed close together.

Laura's thread was silver. Their threads kept crossing, occasionally knotting together before veering away from each other again. At one point, another thread, which appeared alongside Laura's for a little while, crossed them both then ended, and Kara knew instinctively it was Elosha on Kobol.

New Caprica changed everything. Before, the thread connecting her to Leoben had been there but invisible. Leading to New Caprica, it darkened until in the end it was a roiling red, angry and pulsing. That thread overpowered all the others, straining them, almost severing them. 

Until Kacey. 

Kacey's thread was a bright, pure rose, and it wrapped itself around Kara's thread, clinging as tightly as Kacey's arms had clutched her neck. Kara's thread clung in turn, keeping the muddy red of Leoben's thread from tainting Kacey's.

After New Caprica, when Kacey's mom found her, Kara tried to cut the cord between her and Kacey, but Kacey's thread refused to let go, instead forming loose coils, letting Kara be while still lending her strength.

The moments surrounding her death were a gnarl, many threads loosely reaching out toward others in grief or comfort. She had left a hole in the weave. She moved forward, following the warp and weft until she could see nothing. The threads were still there, but she was no longer a part of them, could no longer observe.

Her vision zoomed back out until she could see the whole cloth, complete with the almost irreparable hole in the middle. Only she could weave it back together.

Almost immediately, Elosha's voice floated through her dreamscape. "No more, child. Sleep."

Kara's vision faded into nothing and she slept deeply.

=-=-=-=-=-=

When she woke, her mind was a confusion of threads and weaving and colors. She sat up, seeing Elosha sitting at the foot of the bed, the barest hint of a smile on her face. Kara's mind cleared.

Elosha reached out a hand, and Kara grasped it with hers. 

"You understand now, don't you?" Elosha nodded as she spoke.

"I do. I'm meant to go back. I'm not finished. But I can choose how to do it, what to take with me."

Elosha's smile widened, her teeth gleaming in the low light. "Precisely." She patted the covers. "Now, get dressed. Ellen is on her way."

Kara padded over to the closet, pulling on shorts and tanks and her flight suit, finger-combing her hair into a ponytail. She turned toward the door just as it slid open. "I'm ready, Ellen."

Ellen opened her mouth to speak, then narrowed her eyes at Kara and simply nodded.

She followed Ellen through corridors to a flight deck, where her viper gleamed with newness. She climbed the stairs already there and settled into the cockpit. She completed her preflight check, donned her helmet, and closed the canopy.

She took off, negotiating her way out of the baseship into space. She looked up as Elosha materialized in front of her. Words tumbled from Kara's mouth. "Love. Not pain."

Elosha murmured, "Of course, child," and reached toward Kara.

"Wait! What did you mean, 'yes' and 'no'? About me being a cylon."

Elosha frowned a bit. "No reason to get excited, child." Elosha's hand touched Kara's forehead before she could react.

Kara slumped in her seat, her mind whirling with flashes of a planet - continents, oceans, atmosphere - a bullet-ridden CIC with her fingers on the FTL pad, and musical notes.

Kara's next conscious memory was of touching down on _Galactica_ 's landing deck. She ran through her post-flight check, removed her helmet, and thrust open the canopy. She sprang down the stairs just in time to be enveloped in Lee's desperate hug.

=-=-=-=-=-=

For the rest of her life, Kara occasionally caught flashes of color connecting people, and it comforted her in a way she could never explain, even to herself.

=-=-=-=-=-=

In his box, dreaming  
A blonde girl, smart, sweet, alive  
His love is music

**Author's Note:**

> Vague reference to Early Winter in Delphi (http://archiveofourown.org/works/10315733) by fragrantwoods.


End file.
